by Jean Johnson
The temple lay in the center of the village. It had a small stable, empty save for the sheaves of hay in the low loft, a palm-leaf-sheltered courtyard four times as big as any of the others, and a building two stories higher than the rest. Most of the awnings drooped down from its upper edges, in fact, and the walls had been carefully painted in geometric patterns with repeating motifs of sun and water, palm trees and abstracts in bright shades of yellow, blue, green, and red. Other than that, it was built like the other buildings, with net-covered openings down low and netted windows placed up high, spaced for creating cooling drafts and enough light to see by while hopefully keeping out bugs, snakes, and other small pests.
More netting hung as curtains over the doorways, not only into the temple itself but also to the four cistern sheds in the four corners of the courtyard. The storm doors and window shutters stood open, and someone had taken the time to sweep all the dust from the flagstones lining the ground. It was just as well; splotches of water had been dripped in a series of drying lines from one of the cistern sheds toward the nearest courtyard exit, proof that more than one person had come to fetch their supper water a few moments before. With people constantly coming to the village wells for water, a dusty courtyard would have quickly turned into a muddy courtyard.
The temple building, Eduor knew from his reading, was divided into three segments. On the roof would be the rain-cistern funnels, which led down to the cisterns carved in the bedrock beneath the village. Whenever the seasonal rains came, the dyara’s job was to mount the stairs to the roof and use his or her powers to funnel the precious water falling directly over the village into the collection tanks. If the storm was bad, the dyara diverted some of that water from over the whole oasis as well, since a heavy rainstorm too early in the growing season could wash away seeds and seedlings alike.
The middle layer contained living quarters for the village priest or priestess and his or her family, and for the dyara and his or her immediate family, if the dyara wasn’t the holy representative for the village. Unlike Mandarite priests, who were forbidden to marry, the dyara were considered prime catches as potential mates. There could be several dyara in a village, too, allowing it to grow larger, though small ones like this rarely had more than one or two. Whatever space wasn’t needed by the priesthood and the water-callers was often given over to storage needs for the villagers, save for the occasional room kept ready for guests.
The ground floor was always the same. The court hall stood on the right, far from the cistern sheds and their moisture so as to protect the storage room holding the tax records and other rulings. If there was a problem in the village, the elders and other influential persons would gather to discuss it and pass judgments if there were any problems. The long, open-air sanctuary sat in the middle, where the reflection pool and the eternal flame awaited the light of the midday sun for holy services. To the left, between the temple sanctuary and the courtyard, sat the bathing hall.
Eduor longed for a bath. He had dust and sandy grit in places he didn’t want to think about. The facilities were built along the lines of Natallian-style showers, though every temple bathing hall also had its mikwahs, the purification pools where the villagers would go to soak away their sins once a week after confessing their wrongdoings and receiving their penance tasks from the priests.
It’s not a bad system, he acknowledged, catching a glimpse of the blue-decorated tiles through the curtained bathing hall entrance. In such a hot, dry climate, if you want a cooling, refreshing soak, you confess your sins and promise to be a better person, cleaning yourself on the inside before you clean yourself on the outside. Of course, I know the sins the Natallians would smear on my hide, demanding that I confess and atone before I could clean up and cool off. The problem is ... I haven’t committed nearly as many of them as they wanted to think.
He’d barely been eighteen when his father had been commissioned by King Gustavo the Third to find and claim whatever land the Earl of Aragol could find on the western side of the ocean. What little real combat he had participated in before that point had consisted of responses to minor Natallian landing parties from ships that had slipped along the coast, looking for a weakness in the Mandarite defenses.
As for enslaving women ... well, he hadn’t actually owned more than two concubines before leaving them behind on that ill-fated voyage to the west, though he had been granted the use of his father’s slaves a few times. He had definitely paid for the sin of that with his own two years of slavery. Particularly over the last year and a half.
The memories of what he had been ordered to do left a bad taste in his mouth. Using some of the water in his skin, Eduor washed them away. Never again. Never will I be forced to do that again.
“Would you like to wash away the dirt of your travels?” Chanson asked, gesturing at the entrance to the bathing hall.
“Yes. I must see to the care of my Steed first, of course,” Sir Zeilas added, gesturing at the small stable placed on the opposite side of the courtyard from the bathing hall. He glanced at Eduor, then added, “I would also like to buy a set of clothes for my companion. Something clean for him to wear while his own are washed and dried.”
Chanson eyed Eduor, but more in a thoughtful way than a disdainful one. “We don’t have much to spare, since this is not a wealthy village, but ... I think someone can sell you a thawa and a couple cloths for your head and your loins at the very least. Both of you, if you like. That armor must be very hot.”
The Arbran Knight smiled wryly. “Actually, it’s enchanted for comfort in all weather, from very hot to very cold. I do get tired of wearing it, but I have my own Sundaran-style robes to wear, thank you.”
“Good. As for footwear ... our last guest left behind a pair of sandals, one with a broken lacing. A bit of rope should make them comfortable enough for now, and I think your feet will be about the right size,” Chanson added, looking at Eduor. She gave him a skeptical look. “Though with such pale skin, you should probably keep even your toes out of the reach of the sun. I’ll go look for those clothes.”
Eduor exchanged an amused look with his fellow foreigner. Both of them had browned quite a bit on their faces and hands in the weeks it had taken them to travel this far north. Natallians and Mandarites were born with light golden-brown skin, and Arbrans weren’t exactly pale, either, but neither of them were the rich dark brown of the locals. Since his mother had been half Draconan, lending him his blond hair and blue eyes, Eduor had been born a little pale for a Mandarite, but he was still capable of tanning dark enough to be taken for a Natallian laborer.
At least, on the parts he had exposed to the hot summer sun. Of course, if she wants to see really pale skin ...
Pulling his thoughts away from that, Eduor focused on helping the Knight with his Steed. Mostly that consisted of taking the bedroll, travel pack, saddlebags, and saddle once Sir Zeilas removed them, and fetching water from the nearest cistern to the stone-carved trough. It did not consist of helping to groom and care for the huge stallion personally. An Arbran Steed permitted no other person’s touch without direct orders from his Knight. Though the animal could have carried them both, Eduor hadn’t asked and Sir Zeilas hadn’t offered. He didn’t fill the manger with hay, either, but only because Zeilas had done so while he was bringing up buckets of water from the nearest cistern.
“Thank you for the clothes,” Eduor murmured as he rubbed a lightly dampened cloth along the underside of the saddle, cleaning it of the sweat and dust accumulated in the day’s journey. “It seems I keep owing you more and more for your kindness and generosity.”
Zeilas, now brushing the dust from his Steed’s sorrel-and-cream hide, glanced over his shoulder at the younger man. “I helped you because it was the right thing to do. Whether or not you deserved it. But ... you seem to be worthy of it.”
“Worthy or not, I do owe you,” Eduor pointed out. “And I’ll owe you further for whatever lessons in farming you can give me.”
“You
can pay me back by paying close attention. I can spare only two weeks at absolute most before I must be on my way again,” the Knight warned him. “My term in the court of our envoys to southern Sundara may be done, but His Majesty will undoubtedly want to reassign me elsewhere. He might even want to make me an envoy myself, now that I’ve had some experience under Sir Willem and Sir Helosia. Either here in Sundara or in one of the small kingdoms dredging themselves out of the shattered remains of Mekhana—I’d love to be assigned to Fortuna, but I only learned Sundaran and Mekhanan well enough to converse.”
“I’ll pay close attention,” Eduor promised him. “If I could find paper and ink, I could even take notes.”
“I’ll see what our hostess can provide—here, take the saddle soap and give it a better cleaning than just a wipe down,” Sir Zeilas directed him. “I can tell you’ve cared well for saddles before. I’ll trust you to do a good job.”
“I will. I used to have a fine Mandarosa gelding—that’s what we call a spotted gray with dark mane and tail,” Eduor explained. “The Earldom has probably reverted to the care of one of my uncles by now, since my father and older brother are long gone, and with it, my belongings. Gelding included.”
“If you returned home, would you regain your family lands from your uncle?” Zeilas asked him.
“If I returned home and stayed there for a full year, I’d be declared the next Earl by right of succession, since my father and brother would be considered casualties of war after three years of absence. But I’ve had my fill of being a slave, and no more taste left for owning one, either.”
“And that’s why I chose to help you,” Zeilas said. “I’ll be leaving in two weeks, but there will be others entering your life in the future. They’ll need the things you can do for them, or teach them. Help them as I am helping you, and I’ll consider my own efforts repaid.”
“That’s a strange way to put it,” Eduor murmured. “Where do you get the benefit, if I help someone else?”
“Life is a cycle. When the nut is planted, it grows into a tree that makes more nuts. Some of those nuts are carried far away by squirrels and birds and other things, only to drop forgotten and sprout into more trees. And some trees may fall down, rot, and provide nutrients for yet more young saplings to grow. The more nuts are spread around, the more trees grow to make yet more nuts. Trees provide shade for our comfort, nuts for our dinner, and wood for houses, hearth fires, and furniture.
“The more trees there are, the more we can enjoy the finer things in life,” the Knight told him. “Similarly, the kinder I am to you, the more it encourages you to be kind to others, and the more that encourages them to be kind in turn to an increasing number of people. And who knows, one of these years, one of the people you were kind to will be able to do a kindness to me in turn. Even if it is so indirect as a hundred payments forward, well, that’s still a hundred people whose lives will have been improved, making the world that much better overall.”
“I think I’d want to live in a world with a hundred people happier than before,” Eduor agreed, carefully applying just the right amount of cleansing oil to the leather to get the dirt off without ruining the material by making it too damp. “I’ll see what I can do, here.”
“At least you can fell two trees with one axe stroke. By helping others as a way to repay my own aid, it will include tending the farm of that missing warrior, Falkon, which in turn will earn you something of an income,” the Knight pointed out.
“Yes, but what kind of an income?” Eduor returned. “Food and shelter, maybe, but since the man won’t be here to barter my wages ... I suppose I can always invoke laborer’s rights, and claim a percentage of the after-tax harvest based on how much of the overall labor I put into creating it. But that presumes this Falkon will be gone for most of the planting and growing seasons.”
“Ask for a silver a day or a percentage of the harvest value, whichever is greater when the rightful owner returns,” Zeilas advised him, lifting his Steed’s hooves one at a time to check their soft centers for stones or thorns. “A silver a day isn’t bad for a laborer’s wages, considering you don’t have all of the necessary skills just yet.”
“No, it’s not—don’t forget to scoop that into the village composting bin,” Eduor added as the Steed did what horses liked to do after munching their way through a selection of grain and hay. “Sundarans don’t waste a single dropping if they can help it. The soil’s too poor not to fertilize it any way they can.”
Zeilas chuckled. “Maybe I should make you do the scooping, and myself the saddle-cleaning.”
“And deny you the pleasure of being the first one to bathe? This’ll take me a lot longer than it’ll take you to use a pitchfork and barrow,” Eduor countered lightly. “I know about farming practices. Western Marches is one of the bigger farm holdings in Mandare, and I was trained to help govern it. I just haven’t done certain things, like actually hitching and guiding a plow. I spent more of my time practicing to be a warrior. But I think,” he said as he carefully wiped off the saddle soap with another damp cloth, “I would rather learn to be a farmer, now.”
“Let’s hope you learn quickly,” Zeilas told him. “The autumn rains are due soon, and the ground needs to be broken, dampened, and planted before they begin, so the seedlings have enough time to take root—I learned that much of Sundaran-style farming in my three years here.”
THREE
Chanson knew the next wave of rains were coming. She could feel it as a dampness in her bones, smell it in the air. But she couldn’t stop watching the ex-Mandarite man in their midst.
Despite what she had been led to believe about his kind, he wasn’t arrogant, wasn’t hateful, wasn’t rude or ill-mannered toward women. In fact, Eduor was remarkably polite toward everyone, men, women, and children alike. He was also rather reserved, and that aspect of his mannerisms contrasted with her boisterous fellow Sundarans about as much as his golden skin and wheat-colored hair. Well, the parts of his golden skin that weren’t reddened and browned by excess exposure to the sun. She had already treated him twice with aloe salve in the two weeks since he came to Oba’s Well.
He looks like he fits in, though. Foreigner though he may be, he fits in here, she acknowledged, watching him playing a guessing game with two of the children. The young boy eyed the golden-brown fists held out to him and tapped the left one. Eduor turned his hands up and displayed the pebbles on his palms, one light and one dark.
From the boy’s grin, he had guessed correctly, and Eduor rewarded him by ruffling his short, nubbly twist-locks. Mixing up the two stones, the foreigner tucked his hands into the loose sleeves of his green-and-yellow thawa, then pulled them out as rock-clenching fists and offered them to the young girl patiently waiting her turn. She guessed the right hand and pouted when he revealed the dark pebble in that palm. The two children, cousins and just at the age where they were responsible enough for a few simple chores, followed him into the palm-shaded courtyard of Falkon’s home.
Chanson, as the dyara who had invited them to take care of Falkon’s lands, had allowed him and the Arbran to move into it after their first week here. Both men had proven careful and methodical with the house and its contents, as well as the fields and the animals given into their care. Now that the Arbran Knight had ridden away, Chanson was ostensibly keeping an eye on Eduor to make sure he remained honest and honorable, but she watched him simply because ... well, she didn’t quite know why. Other than that she wanted to watch him. Eduor fit into the village, true, but he was still exotic.
She watched him hand the boy a soft currying brush, which would be used on the filly that had been born just three days before, then hand a bucket of wheat corn to the girl, who moved over to the coop and scattered a few handfuls for the chickens to peck at. The trailing edges of the woven fronds sheltering Falkon’s courtyard made it hard to see more than that, but she did glimpse enough to figure out that much of the scene.
So that’s what the betting was about,
to see who got the “fun” chore of grooming the new filly and who had to deal with the mindless hens. She noted what chore Eduor himself had taken with pleasure and amusement. He’s certainly taking very seriously the rules about cleaning the guano from the henhouse and taking it to the compost heaps. Who would’ve guessed from their reputation that a Mandarite would so happily shovel ... aww, Goddess, the rains are starting in the distance already?
Wrinkling her nose, she sighed and headed back to the temple. Not that she had far to walk; Falkon’s compound was just two houses and courtyards away from the court hall side of the temple. Her dyarina came hurrying up as she reached the front entrance.
“The rains are coming, dyara!” Jimeyon told her, his eyes wide. “I can feel them this time, I swear it! They come from the northwest, right?”
She grinned. He reminded her of herself at that age, all excited about the tingly damp feeling in her blood and her bones. “Good! Yes, they do. Now, up to the roof. You get to try spin-trancing for the first few minutes. A little more dampness on the village ground won’t hurt it and might harden the dust into dirt.”
Jimeyon nodded, accepting her advice. He would be taught as she had been taught, by lessons, observations, and careful practice under the watchful eye of a trained dyara. The dyarina knew better than to practice without supervision. There were too many stories in Sundaran lore of what happened when a dyara turned bad, whether from evil intent, ignorance, pride, or selfishness.
The reverend dyara of the village joined them as they mounted the stairs. Kedle was old, her face wrinkled and her hair solid gray; she moved with the stiffness of the joints that plagued all dyara in their later years and rarely left the village walls. But her mind was still sharp and her smile warmer than the sun, and everyone in Oba’s Well revered and loved her.
